Scarlet Nights (3 page)

Rams sat up in bed and watched her more closely. There was enough light in the room that he could see tears in her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

She held up her hand for him to stop talking. “I understand completely. Luke will do whatever I ask him to.”

“Luke will do what?” Ramsey asked.

Tess looked at her husband. “Would you please be quiet? This is important.”

Angrily, Rams flung back the covers, pulled on his trousers that were hanging over a chair, and opened the curtain to look at the mountains outside. Behind him, Tess kept talking.

“Yes, I think it’s in good condition, and besides me, only Luke knows about it. I’m sure he didn’t tell Joce. He was afraid she’d want to explore it, and he’s always thought it was too dangerous.” Pausing, Tess smiled. “Not yet, but Rams is working on it with enthusiasm and endurance. Yeah, the first one will be named Michael.”

In an instant, Ramsey’s anger left him and he stretched out on the bed beside his wife. He didn’t like the way she’d told intimacies about them to her brother, but he did like that she’d said she planned to have children. They’d not talked about having kids, but he now realized he hadn’t done so in fear that she’d say she didn’t want any. Tess was a woman of very strong opinions. But once he was over his first pleasure at hearing that she did want children, Ramsey began to imagine a dozen of them, all with a name in some form of Michael: Michaela, Michalia, Mickey, Michelle—

“What an extraordinary call,” Tess said as she clicked off her phone.

“I draw the line at Mickey. No mice.”

Tess gave him a look of disgust. “Are you going to start on your jealousy again?”

“I’m not—” Rams began but stopped himself. “So why did your brother feel he had to call you in the middle of the night? Or is he playing James Bond in a country where it’s now teatime?”

“He just arrived in Edilean.”

Rams looked at her. “Your brother is in
our
hometown and you
aren’t packed yet?”

“No, and I’m not going to. He wants us to go on an extended honeymoon—and stay away from home.”

“Not that I object, but why does he want us to do that?”

“It seems that my big brother has been sent to Edilean on a case.”

“But he—” Ramsey swallowed. Tess’s brother went undercover for big cases. Huge cases. He dealt in crimes that had international repercussions. He infiltrated gangs that were at war with each other—he’d been shot repeatedly.

Rams got off the bed and went to the closet.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going home; you’re staying here. If your brother’s been sent to Edilean, then something is very wrong.”

“If you go, I’ll follow you, and that will put my brother in danger. And Mike said that if I’m there
I
might become a target. Is that what you want?”

Turning, Ramsey looked at her. She wore no makeup or clothing, and she was so beautiful he could hardly stand upright. He still couldn’t believe that when he’d asked her to marry him just four weeks ago, she’d said yes. Three weeks later they’d been married in a private ceremony with only a dozen guests. And except that her brother hadn’t been able to be there, it was how they’d both wanted it. In fact, Tess had said, “If you think I’m going to make a fool of myself by wearing a hundred yards of white silk and having a bunch of women around me in pink dresses, then you’ve asked the wrong woman to marry you. Spend the money on a rock. I want a ring big enough to dance on.” He’d happily done just what she asked. And he’d added a pair of diamond earrings—all of which she was wearing now. Just the diamonds, her skin and hair.

“What’s going on in Edilean?” Rams asked. “Who is in danger?”

“You know Mike can’t tell me anything. His cases are top secret. If anyone found out, lives could be lost.”

Ramsey gave her a piercing look. As far as he could tell, her brother didn’t keep secrets from her.

Tess sighed. “Sara.”

Ramsey took a deep breath. “My cousin Sara? Sweet, dear Sara? It’s that bastard she wants to marry, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Tess said simply. “He’s not who he says he is.”

“Now there’s news! I’ve disliked him from the moment I first saw him.”

“All of us have felt the same way, but he’s helped Sara to recover, and their customers love him. Mike wants us to do some things.”

“Mike wants
us
…?” Ramsey grimaced. “If he asked
us
for help then he meant for you to tell me about Sara, didn’t he?”

Tess smiled. “Do you think I’d tell you anything Mike didn’t want me to?”

Ramsey started to, yet again, tell her what he thought of her elusive, secretive brother, but he didn’t. “Okay. I’ll bite. What does he want us to do?”

“First,” Tess said as she lowered her voice and slid down in the bed, “he wants nieces and nephews. He says he’s sick of having no kids to buy Christmas presents for.”

“Did he now?” Rams said as he slipped off his trousers and slid under the covers. “And what else did your very intelligent brother ask for?”

“To figure out what Sara owns that a thief would want. It seems that Greg is a big-time crook and Sara has something he’s gone to a lot of trouble to get.” When Rams started to move away, Tess pulled his face down to hers. “And you’re to take me to Venice.”

“For how long?” he murmured.

“Until Mike says we can return.”

Ramsey didn’t like the autocratic way his brother-in-law was making decrees, but he would do whatever he must to keep his beloved wife safe. Abruptly, he pulled away from kissing her neck. “What kind of gifts does your brother give to kids?”

“C-4.” When Ramsey gave her a look of horror, she laughed. “I don’t know. Why don’t we wait and see?”

The next morning, while Ramsey was in the shower, Tess called her friend and Ramsey’s cousin, Luke Connor, to talk about what Mike needed. He and his wife, Jocelyn, lived in Edilean Manor, a rambling mansion built in 1770. They resided in the two-story main part, while Sara had an apartment in one of the flanking wings on one side. Until her marriage, Tess had had the apartment on the other side.

A few years ago, Luke, a famous best-selling author, had returned to Edilean to recover from a disastrous marriage. As a way of healing, he’d taken over the maintenance of the old house and grounds. After days of heavy rain that nearly flooded the town, he’d discovered an old tunnel. It had been shored up with heavy timbers, and the floors had been laid with handmade brick—and it opened into the floor of Tess’s apartment.

Under normal circumstances, he would have told the people of Edilean what he’d found, but at the time he was so miserable he wasn’t talking to anyone. In private, with only the help of his grandfather, he’d restored the tunnel—which he figured had been used during the Civil War as part of the Underground Railroad to help slaves escape.

After his grandfather died, no one but Luke knew about the tunnel—until Tess discovered it. She was curious about the big square cut in the boards in the middle of her bedroom floor. Luke had made sure there were no handles on top and that it was locked
from the inside, but that didn’t stop Tess from using a crowbar to pry up the boards. She went down the ladder Luke had put there and used a flashlight to make her way along the dark, dank corridor. When she tripped over Luke’s sleeping body—and found out where he disappeared to when no one could find him—for several long moments they’d both been in a state of panic. After they’d calmed down, they went to Tess’s apartment, and Luke ended up telling her his personal problems. And Tess told Luke about her brother and a little of why she’d come to Edilean. She didn’t have to tell him that she was madly in love with her boss, Luke’s cousin, Ramsey. He said the whole town knew that. But Tess had had to wait a long time before Rams figured that out for himself.

After that first nearly hysterical encounter, Luke and Tess had formed a bond between them, and unknown to the gossipy little town, Luke often entered her apartment through the tunnel and spent the night in her second bedroom. So now she called and told him what her brother needed.

“Let me get this straight,” Luke said. “You want me to sabotage Sara’s apartment so she has to move into yours because your brother—who I’ve never met—wants to sneak into your bedroom where Sara will be staying? And this is in the dead of night?”

“That’s exactly right. Is the tunnel in good shape?”

“Bugs and cobwebs, but the structure is sound.”

“So will you do it?”

“I have one question.”

“And that is?”

“Is your brother married?”

“No. Why?”

“Think he could seduce Sara away from Anders?”

“My brother could seduce Jolie away from Pitt.”

Luke groaned. “Sometimes I almost feel sorry for my cousin.”

“Rams needs competition,” Tess said. “How’s Joce?”

“Not so good. We just found out that she has to stay in bed for the rest of her pregnancy or risk losing the twins. But I got her started on doing the family genealogy, and she’s liking that.”

“Tell her that my heart is with her and I’ll call her tomorrow. Anything I can do for her?” Tess asked.

“Come home as soon as you can. She misses you. About Sara, if I tell her I have to fumigate her apartment, she’ll be out in seconds. Leave it all to me.”

“Thank you very much,” Tess said and hung up. When Rams got out of the shower, she was sitting on the little sofa in the hotel room, reading a magazine. “So what do they wear in Venice?”

“Exactly what you have on.” She was completely naked. “Except they add a mask.”

“And where do they put it?”

Ramsey laughed as he walked toward her, his towel dropping to the floor.

2

E
DILEAN
, V
IRGINIA

I
T WAS LATE
at night, and Sara was sewing some adjustments on the bodice of a gown she and Greg had bought on a trip to New York. It had been “one of those,” meaning a dress that Sara’d had to bite her tongue about.

“No woman in Virginia is going to wear this,” Sara had said. It had cutouts on the hips.

“Marilyn Steward,” Greg mumbled as he tossed aside four other dresses.

“Her left thigh is wider than the waist of this dress.” She was holding it up and looking at it. “Maybe Carol Wills. She’s young enough and thin enough that she—”

Greg snatched the dress from her hands. “Why do you have to give me trouble on every dress I want to buy? Leave the designing to me, will you? I’ll buy the dress in a size twelve, put an eight label in it, and Mrs. Wealthy Steward will love it.”

“Right.” As always, Sara backed down. As she put the dress on
the to-buy rack, she thought, And I’ll have to completely remake it to fit her. Which is what she was doing now. She had a closet full of dresses, slacks, jackets and even underwear that needed to be remade to fit their exacting customers.

But in spite of what she thought of his methods, Sara had to admit that under Greg’s expertise, the shop was making money. As he’d predicted, they had customers coming in from Richmond, and even a few women from D.C. had shown up. Their selection was extensive, and their free alterations were a hit. They had women buying a size six dress and asking if Sara could please “let out the seams a tiny bit.” In other words, make it two sizes larger. Every time, Greg said, “Of course she can.” His trick was that he kept the larger sizes in the back. After Sara took the big dress apart and shortened sleeves and hems and drew in the shoulders, Greg would—with a flourish and great charm—present the customer with a dress with a size six label in the back.

The only problem with this scheme—besides the deception, which Sara hated—was that she was the only seamstress.

“Just until we get established,” Greg said. “Then we’ll buy that house in the country you’ve always wanted. We’ll have a dozen kids and you won’t even own a sewing machine.”

It was a wonderful dream, one that Sara clung to with all her might, especially now when Greg had left town so abruptly and mysteriously, and Sara was stuck with about twenty-five pieces of clothing to rebuild. At least the wedding was all arranged, she thought, thanks to Greg’s splendid planning abilities. In fact, she’d had nothing to do but choose her dress—and that was an heirloom. Greg said, “Leave everything to me. I know exactly what you like.” Sara’d had so much work to do for the shop that all she could say was, “Thank you.”

But the truth was, the possibility of his absence during next
week’s Scottish Fair was a bit of a relief. That she’d wanted to go and he didn’t had been one of their few serious arguments. He’d told her she was welcome to stay in Edilean for it, but he was going to New York and he had tickets for a Broadway play that he knew Sara wanted to see. When she’d said it was almost as though he’d arranged the trip to keep her from going to the yearly event, he got angry.

“Of course I did!” Greg yelled. “I want to be with you all the time, but how can I go to some rural hoedown in this town? All your friends and relatives
hate
me. And you know why? Because I’ve taken their precious little workhorse away from them!”

“I’m not—” Sara began, but she’d said it all before. Sometimes she felt torn between the man she loved and the town she adored. Which was, of course, absurd. But it was true that in her hometown of Edilean, people didn’t like the man she was going to marry. Out of town, people loved him. Their customers asked his advice, laughed at his jokes, and soaked up his compliments like rum on sponge cake. But in Edilean…

So Sara had agreed to go to New York with Greg and miss the fair for the first time in her twenty-six years. She wouldn’t be sewing the Scottish costumes for her many cousins, wouldn’t help her mother bake bannocks and tattie scones. She wouldn’t help run Luke’s booth full of herbal wreaths, and she wouldn’t have a day of laughter at seeing the knees of all the men in town when they wore their kilts. She wouldn’t get to—

She broke off her thoughts because to her astonishment, part of the bedroom floor seemed to be lifting upward. She put the dress she was working on down on the bed and rubbed her weary eyes. She was in Tess’s apartment, on the opposite side of Edilean Manor from her own apartment, so maybe it was normal for the floor to start to lift. Or maybe she needed a whole lot of sleep.